I 



MARTIN YM BUREN : 



LAWTEE, 
STATESMA]^ AISTD MAE". 



BY 



WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER. 




N-EW YORK: 
D. APPLETON Al^D COMPANY, 

443 & 445 BEOADWAT. 
1862. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, 

By J. H. RICHARDS, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for 
the Southern District of New York. 



MAETIK YAN BUEEN-. 



At this moment, when our ideas are mus- 
tered at the tap of the drum, and when we 
are waiting for new intellects and new rep- 
utations, with an impatience which speaks 
our extreme need of them, the end of a life 
loaded with the honors of a past generation 
seems of little account. We can hardlj 
spare the time to cast even a glance at the 
retreating figure, which, as it passes from 
the stage, does not lessen the number of 
actors in the foreground, who are carrying 
forward, to its close, the great drama of pres- 
ent events. It is only a supernumerary. 



He has played liis part. He goes -unno- 
ticed. 

Tliis is natural, but it is neither just nor 
wise. "No career which has justified the 
principles on which our free institutions 
rest, and illustrated their matchless crea- 
tive power, should close without its fitting 
tribute. 'No great man, whose greatness 
grew out of the native soil from which all 
that is hopeful or sustaining in the cause 
of freedom must draw its vital stength, 
should go to his grave without something 
more than the funeral obsequies which 
shroud his exit. As the great lights go out, 
let us pause at least long enough to retrace 
the orbits they have travelled, and to mark 
the points of their departure. 



n. 



"Maetin Yak Bueen, Ex-President," 
says the telegraph to the second or third edi- 
tion of tlie evening newspapers of the city, 
on the 24th day of Jnly, 1862, " is dead. He 
was in the eightieth year of his age. He 
will be buried at such a time." Motions are 
made to adjourn such sultry courts as are 
kept open in the summer vacation for stray 
litigation. Flags are at half mast. The 
National Government takes due notice of 
the event. The daily journalists, who are apt 
to know, beforehand, when distinguished 
citizens are near their end, and keep obitu- 
ary notices in type, produce their biogra- 
phies, gleaned from the nearest cyclopedia 
or repository of names and dates. They 
catalogue the honors and titles of the de- 



parted. It is like a merchant taking an 
account of stock. Tliej sum up liis claims 
on tlie public gratitude. It is like an auc- 
tioneer's estimate of the goods he is selling. 
Tlie result is very much the same. The 
dead great man is struck oif, and the next 
lot is taken up. Going, going, gone ! 

After all, this is as much as the daily 
j ournalist can do. If any man seeks a public 
career, let him lay it to heart that the most 
successful public career ends thus, and al- 
ways thus, in a list of titles and an inven- 
tory of honors, a paragraph or a column, 
between yesterday's good news and to- 
morrow's bad news, for which, while men 
are looking, they overlook the paragraph, 
and the column, and the career. 

l^otwith standing, let us take a closer 
scrutiny of this life of seventy-nine years, of 
which so much was passed in the service 



of the State. Perhaps we shall find that 
we misjudge in supposing it to be a mere 
schedule of public offices and rapid political 
promotions. Perhaps it was carved out by 
a patient, resolute, and courageous will, 
guided by an intellect which looked into 
the centre of things, and into the secrets of 
men. 

Disengaging ourselves from details,which 
do not belong to the rapid summary at 
which I am now aiming — Mr. Yan Buren 
was a great lawyer. The foundation of all 
his successes was laid in his legal training. 
A professional man must be judged by his 
profession. A true lawyer is always a law- 
yer. If he gives himself wholly to the se- 
vere discipline which is the condition of suc- 
cess, and gains the secrets of that science 
which, more than all other human forces, 
directs the progress of events, its subtle 



8 

light siiiTomids him like an atmosphere, and 
accomj)anies him like a perpetual presence. 
If he takes the wings of the morning, and 
dwells in the uttermost regions of the ima- 
gination, it is there ; if he makes his bed 
among politicians, it is there ; if he says, 
surely the darkness of evil passions shall 
cover me, even there the night is light 
about him. The key to Mr. Van Buren's 
rare supremacy in his political life, lies in 
the sedulous and patient toil with which 
his intellectual powers, strong by nature, 
were tempered and polished in the slow 
processes of his professional career. 

I said he was a great lawyer. This, to 
most readers, is a mere phrase. And, for 
such readers, it would not help them to a 
clearer meaning if ihey were to be referred 
to adjudged cases in Johnson's Reports. 
Let me rather try to give them an idea of 



9 

tlie legal career itself, wMch is summed up 
by such a phrase. 

Mr. Yaii Buren, as we all know, was a na- 
tive of Columbia County. There he learned 
what they could teach him at the village 
academy. Having few books to study, 
he began to study men, and then, at the 
age of fourteen years, to study law. He 
served a seven years' apprenticeship, and 
was admitted to the Bar. This was in 1803, 
just at the threshold of the present cen- 
tury. He was thrown at once into a socie- 
ty marked by the strongest traits of individ- 
ual character. The hot blood of the Eev- 
olution still ran in the veins of men active 
in all the pursuits of life. It must find 
vent in some way, and it found vent partly 
in politics, partly in local feuds, which 
were fought out in the courts. Litigation 
was a serious matter. Political prejudices 



10 



and personal animosities found place in the 
jiuy box, on the witness stand, on the 
Bench, and at the Bar. The leading law- 
yers were the representatives of the two 
leading parties. 

The Federalists of Columbia County, 
who had money, lands, and a kind of pa- 
trician pride ; wlio believed in their own 
capacity to govern everybody, and disbe- 
lieved in the capacity of other people to 
govern themselves ; who had all the prop- 
erty, and claimed all the power, put for- 
ward, as their champion, Elisha Williams, 
a man whose name is harldly known to this 
generation, except by professional tradi- 
tions, but whose genius was brilliant 
enough to dispense with the light it bor- 
rowed from such patronage. He was one 
of those rare men whom other men cannot 
resist. He was invincible before juries. 



11 

He could make his hearers laugh when 
they felt sober, and he could make them 
cry when they wanted to laugh. He could 
make a witness tell the truth when he 
meant to lie, and appear to lie when he 
was trying to tell the truth. He got im- 
possible verdicts, against Law, and Fact, 
and Reason. He was a man not to be ri- 
valled on his own ground, or fought with 
his own weapons. Mr. Yan Buren trained 
himself to meet this giant. He was his op- 
posite in politics, in professional tactics, in 
the means by which he reached his own 
conclusions and other men's minds. It was 
the old story of Richard and Saladin ; of 
the heavy w^eights and the light weights. 
The two gladiators were well matched, and 
the incessant quarrels of their clients 
brought them into constant conflict. The 
lawsuits were innumerable. Sometimes 



12 

they were about trifles, sometimes about 
grave matters. ]^ow it was a controversy 
over a bet on a horse race or an election ; 
now about a fishing net misappropriated in 
the shad season ; now about a road, or a 
farm fence, or a town line, or a disputed 
title. Generally, the case fell under the head 
of what, in the language of the law, is 
called " trespass," which includes almost 
every conceivable injury which one man 
can do to another man's person, property, 
or character. The Federalists of those 
days were not in the habit of forgiving the 
Democrats who trespassed against them, 
unless they paid damages and costs, and 
the law was the only peacemaker. 

These hard fights did not end with the 
jury trials. They went up from the Coun- 
ty Circuit to the Supreme Court. That 
was then an august tribunal. It was not. 



13 



as now, a mere machine for the despatch 
of business. Jnpiter, with his thunderbolts, 
was not more temble than a Chief Justice 
of that day. Tlie sittings were held at the 
Capitol in Albany and at other central 
points, and the whole Bar, from every 
coTmty, came up to attend them. The men 
who had gained local reputations, in remote 
districts, were brought in contact with each 
■ other, and vied for more extended honors. 
Albany furnished Henry and Van Vech- 
ten. The New York cases, which smelt 
of ships, and shops, and brokers, brought 
up John Wells, Aaron Burr, Thomas Ad- 
dis Emmet, and other metropolitan law- 
yers, among whom were two men who fig- 
ured in the reports as " S. Jones, Jr." and 
'• Oakley." The county trespass suits and 
ejectments brought the country lawyers, 
and, among them, the two rival leaders of 



14 

the Columbia circuit. Here Elislia Wil- 
liams could not fetch his juries. He had 
to fight at close quarters ; on the law, and 
not on the facts. The clearer intellect of 
Mr. Yan Buren, with its keen edge of anal- 
ysis and its sharp distinctions, cut through 
to the marrow of the case, and laid bare all 
its vital points. Only a short time since, 
in an important case decided in the Court 
of Appeals, I noticed that, in the opinion 
of the Court, an argument which might 
have had some show of strength, was dis- 
posed of by the suggestion, that in a lead- 
ing case, argued by Mr. Yan Buren, in 
which it would have worked in his favor, 
he conceded that it was untenable. This 
was a rare tribute. Elisha Williams him- 
self gracefully yielded the palm, when he 
said, truly and tersely, to his old rival, " / 
get all the verdicts^ and you get all the 



15 

judgments. '^^ This was more tlian a happy 
phrase. It was a revelation of the whole 
interior purpose and policy by which Mr. 
Van Buren sought success. He indicated 
it himself, in a more famous sentence, when 
he appealed to " the sober second thought " 
of the people. The judgment is a kind of 
sober second thought, after the verdict. 
He looked for that, and was willing to 
work and wait for it. But it was a surer 
rule in the science of the law than in the 
game of politics. With us, it is the first 
thought, or rather the first impulse, which 
controls. The sober second thought is, too 
often, only another name for repentance. 

Not one of those eminent lawyers, w^hose 
names figure thus, side by side, with Mr. 
Yan Buren's, in the books of Reports, now 
survives. And the chronicle of all their 
exploits in these keen encounters of intel- 



16 

lect, is only for professional readers. But 
tliey Lad this advantage over tlieir succes- 
sors, in the same calling, that the reporter 
of their time, having less material for his 
volumes than the reporter of to-day, pre- 
served and recorded the arguments of 
counsel, as well as the decisions and opin- 
ions of the Judges, so that a certain kind 
of immortality waited upon their most im- 
2)ortant efforts and they had the satisfac- 
tion of knowing that, so long as the law 
was followed as a science, its disciples 
would not fail to recognize them as pioneers 
in its labyrinthine paths, to learn something 
from what they taught, and to take courage 
from their example. 

III. 

Over the long public career which, at 
first, ran side by side with these profes- 



17 

sional successes, but soon drew his whole 
life into its swifter and bolder current, 
some men, viewing Mr. Yan Buren from 
this distance, will write " Politician^'' 
some men " Statesman.'''' It matters little 
to us, whose business is not historical 
anatomy or political dissection. Here is a 
man, self-made, self-sustained, with no 
hereditary or accidental aids in the search 
for fame and fortune, who from 1812, when 
he succeeded in his first contest for a j3op- 
ular office, against a Livingston and a land- 
lord up to 1841, when he left the Presi- 
dential chair, held in succession almost 
every place of trust or power known under 
our form of government — State Senator, 
State Attorney-General, United States Sen- 
ator, Governor of ]^ew York, Secretary of 
State, Minister to England, Yice-President, 
President. If you count by honors, surely 



18 

these are tlie places whicli belong to states- 
men. If you exact the test of ]3opnlar 
judgment, the most substantial of all these 
prizes were direct gifts from the people. If 
you judge him by his competitors and con- 
temporaries, no man ever had such rivals 
in the race for power. All the great 
names which stand for party issues or pop- 
ular leadership in the history of our poli- 
tics, since this century began, are on the 
roll with his. If you make measures the 
standard, no party leader was ever more 
tenacious as to his policy or more success- 
ful in securing its ultimate triimiph. The 
Sub-Treasury was the result of the longest 
and fiercest political struggle between the 
greatest political parties we have ever seen 
or shall see. It took the place which he 
planned for it, and has stood, ever since, 
as stable as any other of the institutions 



19 

wliicli are now rocking in the storm. It is 
no fault of the system it embodies that we 
are just now doing penance with green- 
backs, and anticipating the new currency 
of postage stamps — which are to be good 
for everything but postage. 

We would hardly hesitate long if it were 
Mr. Yan Buren's legal record, which we had 
under our eye, whether to label it " petti- 
fogger" or "jurist." His public record 
must settle the question as to his states- 
manship. 

The politics of this State of ISTew York 
have always been a great deep. Few read- 
ers, now-a-days, care to explore them. 

It is one of the hopeful signs of our times 
that political issues are shaping themselves 
upon such plain, broad grounds, that they 
are easily comprehended even by women 
and children. This is a substantial gain, 



20 

even tliongli made at a fearful cost. But as 
to what is past in politics, liow few, even of 
tlie well informed, conld pass an examina- 
tion. The most observant might recollect 
there have been Barnbnrners and Old 
Hunkers, and that, before them, were Loco- 
focos. But with that remote period when 
the Bucktails warred with the Clintonians, 
the present generation have almost as little 
concern as if it were antediluvian, instead 
of being only ante-Jacksonian. De Witt 
Clinton is the central figure of that period, 
which seems so distant simply because the 
intervening sx)ace, between us and it, is so 
crowded with events and men. The fierce 
struggle between the Republican party of 
that day, after it had broken with De Witt 
Clinton and gone ofiP into Democracy, pure 
and simple, and those who followed the 
fortunes of the deserted leader, had in it 



21 

something of tlie gall and wormwood of 
a family quarrel. Out of ]^ew York it was 
wliolly incomprehensible, although it really 
shaped the political destinies of the country. 
The amusing mishap which befell General 
Jackson at Tammany Hall, when he first 
came to 'New York, as I have heard him 
tell about it, is an illustration in point. 
This was in 1819. The General's laurels 
were all fresh, and the Bucktails had 
claimed him as their own. He was in 
their hands when he made his visit to the 
city. They did the honors of Tammany 
for their new hero. He knew more about 
the Creek Indians than about the Chiefs 
of the Old "Wigwam. From what he saw 
with his own eyes, he j^robably got no 
further than a corroboration of Halleck's 
statement — 

" There's a barrel of porter at Tammany Hall, 
And the Bucktails are swigging it all the night long." 



22 

But as to tlieir politics lie was in tlie 
dark, except that they were Democrats and 
Jackson men. The Sachems feasted him 
and toasted him. He stood up to respond. 
The bosoms of the Bucktails expanded in 
anticipation ; they were full of enthu- 
siasm. They had only one passion which 
was stronger than their affection for Jack- 
son, and that was their hatred of De Witt 
Clinton. The General, who was never 
much of a speech maker, thought on this 
occasion that he would do the handsome 
thing in the way of a toast. He knew he 
was in the great State of 'New York, and 
that De Witt Clinton was its Governor. 
He had heard of the Erie Canal. He had 
a notion that De Witt Clinton was pop- 
ular. He knew that he was a man of 
whom they ought to be proud all over the 
State, and he concluded that they were 



23 

proud of him at Tammany. So he gave 
" De Witt Clinton : to he great is to he 
envied ! " The effect may be imagined. 
It was as if some one should propose the 
health of General Butler at a matinee of 
the " ladies " of ISTew Orleans. The up- 
roarious Bucktails were struck dumb. The 
General sat down in silence. He applied 
to the nearest Bucktail for a solution, and 
found out his mistake. But he let the 
toast stand. This reminiscence he enjoyed 
vastly as he recounted it. " What should 
I know," he said, " about their politics ? " 
His business had been to fight, and not to 
raise or feed party issues to sustain a rej)u- 
tation in advance of his successes. The 
next toast he ventured was on surer 
ground. It was at a table where he knew 
the company better than he knew the Tam- 
many Bucktails. They were Southern 



24 

nullifiers and their sympathizers. Jackson 
threw down the gauntlet to them in a 
toast, Out Federal Union : it must he 
preserved! — the best after-dinner senti- 
ment ever uttered. Was it a toast or 
a prophecy ? 

Just here, General Jackson's first impres- 
sions of Mr. Yan Buren are in place. They 
met in 1823, at "Washington, as Senators 
of the United States. The Tennessee Sen- 
ator soon formed his opinion of the ITew 
York Senator. I will give his own narra- 
tive, as I listened to it under the porch of 
the Hermitage in 1844. " I had heard a 
great deal about Mr. Yan Buren," said 
the General, " especially about his non- 
committalisin. I made up my mind that 
I would take an early opportunity to hear 
him and judge for myself. One day an 
important subject was under debate in the 



25 

Senate. I noticed that Mr. Yan Buren 
was takino^ notes while one of the Senators 
was speaking. I judged from this that he 

. intended to reply, and I determined to be 
in my seat when he spoke. His turn came, 
and he rose and made a clear, straightfor- 
ward argument, which, to my mind, dis- 
posed of the whole subject. I turned to 
my colleague. Major Eaton, who sat next 
to me : ' Major,' said I, ' is there anything 
non-committal about that ? ' ' ]S"o, sir,' 
said the Major." This decision of Jackson's 
head was never reversed by his heart. 

!N"on-committalism was the standing 
charge against Mr. Yan Buren. This man, 
who had committed all manner of political 
crimes, had never committed himself 

' From the time that the Hudson Federalists 
gave up trying to convert him, finding that 
he was a predestined Democrat, they began 
2 



26 

to call him. hard names. When the Wins: 
party administered on the estate of the 
Federal party, it succeeded to its entire 
stock in trade of abuse. It had assets 
enough in the way of epithets to set up 
half a dozen Parson Erownlows. Mr. 
Yan Buren was a fox, a snake in the grass, 
a little magician, and whatever else in ani- 
mated nature symbolizes cunning and 
malice. We can see now how all this 
helped him, as he ran the gauntlet of vitu- 
peration, straight into place and power. 
Abuse is the healthiest diet for a politi- 
cian. Besides, this throwing stones at 
character was a game that two could play 
at, and both parties played at it. A very 
lively game it was too, as they carried it on. 
All along, the blunders of Mr. Yan 
Euren's political opponents in respect to 
him were greater than their crimes. They 



27 

set Elisha Williams on him when he was 
stniggliiig for a position, and this roused him 
into strength. De Witt Clinton removed 
him from the office of Attorney-General; this 
made him a martyr, and he rallied his parti- 
sans to avenge the wrong done to their cause 
in his person. A similar blunder, on a larger 
scale, was his rejection as Minister to Eng- 
land by the Senate. This made him Yice- 
President, and helped to make him Presi- 
dent. They should have seen, what the 
history of his life shows plainly enongh 
now, that while they called him non-com- 
mittal, this was a mere criticism on the 
caution of his style and conduct, and that 
in the political ring he dealt his blows 
fairly and squarely, and always came up 
to time. He was essentially independent, 
and would stand by himself when his judg- 
ment led him to differ from others. He 



28 

resisted tlie efforts of his early patron and 
partner to draw liim into Federal alliances. 
He supported Clinton in 1812, against liis 
friends. He entered tlie lists in a les-al 
controversy with Chancellor Kent on the 
question of what was called the Classifica- 
tion bill, a favorite war measure for a spe- 
cies of drafting. He advocated the claims 
of Rufus King, a Federalist, for Senator 
of the United States in 1819. He would 
not bid for popularity by surrendering his 
objections to universal suffrage in 1821, 
nor by joining in the " Lone Star" cry for 
the annexation of Texas in 1844. 

He had, it is true, the best aid in all his 
plans. Cool heads and well-trained hands 
organized all the victories of the Jefferson- 
ian-Jacksonian Democracy. Viewed as a 
party, it was a grand power. The Albany 
Hegency has been slandered in its day and 



29 

generation. But tlie men who made up 
that famous junto were not only able and 
adroit, they were honest in public as well 
as in private life. If they took office, they 
left it as poor as they went into it. They 
had sense enough to know that, when they 
were in power, they could be served better 
in places of trust by their friends than their 
enemies, and that, when their principles 
were in the ascendant, they could be best 
enforced by those who believed in them. 
And they acted accordingly. But, in the 
main, they put forward strong men. Mr. 
Yan Buren was their strongest man, next 
to General Jackson, and they put him for- 
ward in his turn. His turn in the Senate 
was when Clay, and Webster, and Cal- 
houn, and all the others by whose great- 
ness we measure our glory, were in their 
prime. To disparage any one of these 



30 

great men, is to disparage tlaem all. If 
Mr. Yaii Buren had had fiftj regencies to 
back him, it would not have availed in such 
a field, and with such foes. He stood on 
his own merits, and by these he won. 

The most signal triumph of his long po- 
litical course was when the Senate, which 
by a single vote, and that the casting vote 
of Mr. Calhoun, had rejected him, in 1832, 
as Minister to England, received him, by 
the will of the people, as its presiding offi- 
cer in 1833. The whirligig of time had 
brought a swift revenge. This was a rare 
instance of what we are fond of calling 
poetical justice, and was a success which 
seems admirably in harmony with his patient 
and deliberate methods of approach to the 
objects of his ambition. 

According to the popidar view of it, Mr. 
Yan Buren's Presidency was a prolongation 



31 

of General Jackson's term. It was twelve 
years, instead of eiglit, of tlie same Ad- 
ministration. The old issues had been set- 
tled, and no new issnes were developed. 
Mr. Yan Buren " followed in the footsteps 
of his illnstrious predecessor." The prede- 
cessor had been too illustrious, and his foot- 
steps had so shaken the whole social sys- 
tem, that a great shock was inevitable. 
Not that General Jackson or his Adminis- 
tration were in fault for the commercial 
convulsions of 1837 ; but, in the nature of 
things, after a contest such as that which 
had been waged during his Presidency, a 
mighty reaction must sooner or later have 
come. The strong forces were spent which 
had driven the flood of Democratic suc- 
cesses to such a height, over all tlie break- 
ers and against the giant undertow. When 
the ebb came, the tide went out with a 



32 

great rusli. The triumph of the Whig par- 
ty, in 1840, was not a victory of opinions or 
of men, but of Log Cabins and Hard Cider. 
As Elisha Williams would say, the Whigs 
got the verdict. Four years afterward, the 
Democrats got the judgment. Unluckily 
for Mr. Yan Buren, between the verdict 
and the judgment, there was no stay of pro- 
ceedings. 

Mr. Yan Buren's political career ended 
in 1840. I know that he was before the 
convention in 1844, and before the j)eople 
in 1848. But nothing came of either can- 
didacy, so far as he was concerned. 

In 1844 he was fairly entitled to the 
nomination of his party. It was due to 
him, if ever anything is due from a party 
to a leader. But he was the victim of a 
National Convention. Since then we have 
found out the wickedness of which such 



33 

conventions are capable ; how tliey stran- 
gle tlie men whom they were expected to 
crown, and how they plot against the 
existence of the nation while pretending to 
select competitors for its highest places. 

Tlie Free Soil campaign of 1848 is fresh 
enough in recollection to need no historian 
as yet. Mr. Yan Bnren's name was in it, 
but not his head nor his heart. Great 
words were inscribed on its banners — 
'' Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and 
Free Men." But they were words of ad- 
vance and not of strategy, and Mr. Yan 
Buren was too deeply intrenched in his old 
political notions to ntter them in earnest. 
The Free Soil movement, in fact, meant 
more than was dreamt of by most of those 
who set it in motion. Some of its promot- 
ers were in it from principle ; some from 
association ; some out of revenge ; some as a 



34: 



mere game of Albany politics, directed bj 
a Eegency of a later date, carrying on 
business at the old stand, but who were apt 
to substitute bad whiskey for old Madeira. 
Only a few, perhaps none, saw the end of 
this beginning, or caught a glimpse of 
what was behind the veil— the tumult and 
the battle, the confused noise of the war- 
riors, and the garments rolled in blood. 
As to many of them, they had no faith in 
the work they were doing for freedom. 
They were like the incredulous Samaritan 
who was very anxious for the destruction 
of the army of Benhadad, chiefly on ac- 
count of its large supply of provisions, but 
who did not credit the prophecy which 
foretold it. They saw it with their eyes, 
but did not eat thereof. These were mere- 
ly the advanced couriers of a progress, in 
whose triumphs they were not to share. 



35 



rv. 



After all, it is not tlie lawyer nor the 
statesman, but the man, of whom we mnst 
take the final account. Mr. Van Buren, in 
his personal traits, was marked by a rare 
individuality. He was a gentleman, and 
he cultivated the society of gentlemen. 
He never had any associates who were vul- 
gar or vicious. He affected the compan- 
ionship of men of letters, though I think 
his conclusion was that they are apt to 
make poor politicians and not the best of 
friends. Where he acquired that peculiar 
neatness and polish of manner which he 
wore so ligMly, and which served every 
turn of domestic, social, and piiblic inter- 
course, I do not know. As far as my early 
recollections go, it was not indigenous in 
the social circles of Kinderhook. I do not 



36 



think it was essentiallj Dutch. It could 
hardly be called natural, although it seemed 
so natural in him. It was not put on, for 
it was never put off. As you saw him once 
you saw him always— always punctilious, 
always polite, always cheerful, always self- 
possessed. It seemed to any one who stud- 
ied this phase of his character as if, in some 
early moment of destiny, his whole nature 
had been bathed in a cool, clear, and un- 
ruffled depth, from which it drew this life- 
long serenity and self-control. 

If any vulnerable point was left, I 
never discovered it. It has been conjec- 
tured that Aaron Burr, who was in great 
social as well as professional repute at the 
time Mr. Tan Buren first came to INTew 
York as a student at law, and whose hands 
■were, as yet, unstained with the blood of 
Hamilton, was the model after which he 



37 



copied. If this be so, Le improved on the 
original, for Mr. Yan Bnren's manner had 
in it nothing that was sinister, or which 
roused suspicion. His imperturbability was 
most remarkable. He never seemed to do 
anything on impulse, nor to be taken by 
surprise by events that were the most sur- 
prising, nor to be elated by those which were 
the most exciting, nor to be disconcerted 
by those which were the most untoward. 
He was, to outward appearance, at all 
times the same, in all the essentials of 
good breeding and a proper self-respect ; as 
much so when he took his seat as Yice- 
President, in the Chair of the Senate, over 
which he had triumphed, or when he re- 
peated the oath which inaugurated him in 
the Presidency, as when, at the close of the 
day which decided the election of Harrison, 
he heard the urchins of Washington re- 



38 

peating, about the White House, the fa- 
vorite Log Cabin refrain, " Van, Va7h, is 
a used up tnany 

Toward his political opponents he was 
always fair and even liberal. He kept on 
good terms with all of them. If he did 
not follow Cardinal Wolsey's maxim, and 
cherish the hearts that hated him, he was, 
at least, as courteous to them as if they 
were not in the habit of abusing him in 
public, and slandering him in private. This, 
in the main, was an effort of policy, but there 
was in it something of magnanimity. Once, 
at least, all his native reserve and studied 
reticence gave way, before a gush of feel- 
ing, not at the misfortunes of a friend, but 
at the fall of his most dreaded rival. 
When De Witt Clinton died, Mr. Van Bu- 
ren was at Washington. A meeting of 
Senators and Eepresentatives was called to 



39 



pay a tribute of respect to the memory of the 
great statesman. Mr. Van Buren spoke, in 
words of warm eulogy, of his great and sig- 
nal services, and the gratitude they should 
inspire, and then added : " For myself, sir, 
so strong, so sincere, and so engrossing is 
this feeling that I, who, while living, never, 
no never, envied him anything, now that 
he has fallen, am tempted to envy him his 
grave, with its honors ! " Hardly any- 
thing could be finer than this. 

It was another of the charges against 
him that he was no Democrat. He dressed 
too well, he lived too well, the company he 
kept was too good, his tastes were too re- 
fined, his tone was too elegant. So far as 
Democracy is supposed to have an elective 
aflinity for dirt, this was all true ; he was 
no Democrat in taste or feeling, and he 
never pretended to be. The only President 



40 

who ever betrayed the American people, 
is the oulj one of whom I remember to 
have seen it chronicled in the newspapers, 
as a proof of his democracy, that he made 
a parade of getting out of a stage-coach in 
the course of a hot journey, and washing 
his face in a tin basin and drying it on the 
tavern towel. The peoj)le thought no bet- 
ter of him for that bit of deception, which 
deceived nobody. 

Mr. Yan Buren never played such tricks 
as these. As to the elements of the widest 
popularity, they were not in him. He 
never inspired enthusiasm, as Jackson did, 
or Henry Clay. The masses accepted him 
as a leader, but they never worshipped him 
as a hero. He is not canonized in their 
affections. The day of his birth will not be 
commemorated in distant cities or in re- 
mote periods of time. His name will never 



41 



be a watchword. Yet lie liad many de^ 
voted friends, among men who never 
wanted office, and who drew closer to him 
in his retirement than when he was in 
power. Tliis much I can testify, that on 
the part of one man, than whom no purer 
or nobler ever lived, he was the object of 
an affection so true and steadfast, so faith- 
ful through good report and evil report, so 
loyal to its own high sense of duty, so ten- 
> der and so generous, that it could never 
cease to command my admiration, if it had 
not long ago claimed my filial reverence. 
Seen through a medium so pure and tran- 
quil, the traits of the character I have at- 
tempted to draw are all tinged with its 
mellow light and glow with its genial 
1^ warmth, and the faults or failings which 
another and perhaps a juster scrutiny 
'^ might disclose, fade out of sight. 



42 



His retirement was dignified and ex- 
Presidential. He withdrew to liis native 
soil, and there settled, contentedly, among 
the farmers and farm houses of Columbia 
County, the jDossessor of a larger farm than 
his neighbors, and a larger house, as was 
his right. Here it was evident at once that 
he was not likely to die of a defeat at an 
election or the casualties of a E'ational 
Convention. He took no grudge against 
the country for having refused him that 
second term which was all that was needed 
to round with completeness the full circle 
of his ambition. He spent a score of years 
m this seclusion, varied by occasional visits 
to old friends and an extended tour in Eu- 
rope ; and among his books, his neighbors, 
the friends whom he attracted to the genial 
hospitalities of his house, and the rural pur- 
suits, which he followed with characteristic 



43 

regularity and metliod, he passed a tran- 
cpil old age, outliving by a decade what 
Elisha Williams used to call the " Al- 
mighty's statute of limitations." 

V. 

On the day of the funeral, we drove over 
the dusty road from Hudson to Kinderhook, 
past the yellow fields, just ready for the 
harvest, which rolled from the river, east- 
ward, toward the heart of the fertile coun- 
try. How fertile it had been in great men, 
the greatest of whom had just been gath- 
ered by the reaper. Death ! We skirted the 
wide lawns of Lindenwald, across whose 
sunny sward the last shadow of the funeral 
train had already passed. As we came 
nearer to the journey's end, the roads were 
all astir with the motley crowd of country 
vehicles, pressing toward the same centre. 



u 

The village was as full as if some weighty 
agricultural interest were at stake, or some 
gala day had called all the county togeth- 
er ; only the flag over the green was at 
half mast, the bell was tolling, and the peo- 
ple wore a serious air. In the old Dutch 
church, more thronged, I presume, than 
ever before, the funeral services went on. 
The village choir sang the old-fashioned 
requiem, given out as the Ninetieth Psalm, 
second part, which tells us, in words as 
mournful and as true as when David first 
breathed them in Hebrew to his harp, or 
Dr. Watts diluted them in English verse, 
how 

" Time, like an ever rolling stream, 
Bears all its sons away." / 

The clergyman, with rare good sense, for- 
bore to eulogize, so near the brink of the 
grave, and taught the graver lessons of pa- 



45 



triotism and religious truth which the hour 
'^.emanded. Afterward, the coffin lid was 
opened, and the vast concourse of people 
passed slowly by and looked their last on 
the face of the dead. All was done decent- 
ly and in order. It would have been hard 
to find a procession in which were mixed 
more of the elements of sterling manhood 
and womanhood than in that which thus 
took leave of their old friend. Rustic beau- 
ties, not a few, with faces half flushed with 
the excitements of a public occasion, half 
sobered with its sadness ; wholesome, mat- 
ronly women ; hale men, who would have 
delighted the eyes of the recruiting ser- 
geant, and veterans as old or older than 
the departed. All seemed moved with a 
common and sincere grief. This was the 
best tribute that could be paid. They felt 
that they too had shared in the honors of 



46 

their statesman. His fame had made all 
their neighborhoods famous. He had been 
the link by which that quiet inland centre 
had been bound so long to the great world 
beyond, and now it was broken. Our sor- 
row is never so sincere as when it is a part 
of ourselves that we have lost. 

Mr. Yan Buren has left memoirs, partly 
finished. If his reminiscences can be given 
to the world as he was in the habit of giv- 
ing them to his friends, in all the freshness 
of familiar intercourse, they will be most 
attractive. There was a charm about his 
conversation, when it turned on the inci- 
dents of his personal experience, which 
could hardly be transferred to the printed 
page, so much of its interest depended on 
manner and expression. Mr. Yan Buren 
had no wit, but he had humor, and a keen 
sense for the humorous, and he could re- 



47 



produce, with rare fidelity, whatever in the 
actions or the characters of men he had 
thought worth remembering. It is to be 
hoped that out of the material he has left 
for such a work, we may have one that 
shall represent to us something of the real 
activities and interior lives of those of 
whom we know so little beyond their 
names and titles, so that they may seem to 
us more like living men, and less like 
mummies. At this present moment, we 
could hardly stop to read such a book, no 
matter how vivid and lifelike. But after 
the storm and the earthquake are over, and 
we have learned to value the Eepuhlic by 
'^ what it has cost us in brave lives, we, or 
eyes younger than ours, will turn with 
new interest and delight to whatever in ht- 
erature or in art shall be commemorative 
I of those who have served it best. 



3l|77-2 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




III Hill ill! 




011896 379 9 # 



